Frank Keating

Another big fight on Saturday in Vegas: Britain’s welterweight Ricky Hatton vs the accomplished American Floyd Mayweather. Victory for the four-square brickhouse banger from Manchester will, you see, have him headline-hailed back home as Britain’s finest ever — totally preposterous, of course, as were the ditto hosannahs hurrahed from the hillsides just a month ago for the talented Welsh middleweight Joe Calzaghe. Prizefighting has been awash with hyperbole ever since Kid Cain won the decision against Sugar Ray Abel all those biblical aeons ago. I’ve crossed the pond for quite a few bloody late nights down the years and I admit that on days like today I still miss the concentrated huddle and hubbub of ringside and, yes, the chivalry, skill and heroism inside it.

Clueless about who, where or what to turn to next, I wonder which was history’s first body to announce a ‘full and far-reaching commission of enquiry’ in which to cover itself with a sub judice blanket until the army of furious castigators either runs out of rotten tomatoes or turns their bombardment of scorn to other targets. The English Football Association’s ‘drastic root-and-branch examination of every aspect’ of the national team’s past and future performance is neither more, nor less, than that.

Sportswriting lost a glistening luminary when Ian Wooldridge died at 75 last spring. In four decades he produced more than seven million words for the Daily Mail which, aware of his unmatchable worth, rewarded him and his expenses chits with grateful generosity. It was never necessary for Ian, as it was for his impoverished peers, to bolster the weekly pittance by recycling the tired old stuff in book form. For their part, his employers, no mugs, guarded the Wooldridge byline with severity.

The to-and-fro of the 2012 Olympic Games’s accounting transparency (or otherwise) continues to be what old sportswriters used to call ‘a ding-dong contest’. The to-and-fro of the 2012 Olympic Games’s accounting transparency (or otherwise) continues to be what old sportswriters used to call ‘a ding-dong contest’. The shrill voice of the government’s Olympic minister Tessa Jowell insists on allegiance to the ancient competitive adage that attack is the best means of defence, while the opposition retaliates with the charge that the Olympic Delivery Authority has lost control of the £9.3 billion budget — £9.3 billion! — and, as well, has no clue how much of the additional £2.

In need of a positive spin from anywhere, ITV can at least console itself with the plaudits for its exclusive live coverage of rugby’s recent World Cup. The oddity (probably unnoticed by most viewers) was that the channel’s senior commentary team and many of its studio sages had been rented for the tournament from its deadly rivals at Sky; rather, I suppose, like old Hollywood times when the likes of Bogart, Grable and Gable were hired out to a competitor for lots of lolly when their own contract studio couldn’t find them a part or, as they used to say, ‘a vehicle’.

With league fixtures into double figures, the autumn’s general-excuse-me overture has finished and the long winter slog is really underway. The eightsome reel at the top of the Premiership comprises natch the four usual suspects (Arsenal, Manchester United, Liverpool and Chelsea) and a fresh quartet of determined pretenders girding up to press on from highly promising starts: Manchester City, Portsmouth, Blackburn Rovers and Newcastle United. The eight are managed by a Frenchman, a Scot, a Spaniard, an Israeli, a Swede, a Welshman and two Englishmen.

Widespread focus of national passions on the conclusion of Lewis Hamilton’s dash for the chequered flag on the Formula One racetrack and rugby’s compelling World Cup muted much of England’s hostile recriminations over its inept football team’s almost certain elimination from the 2008 European championship. The diversions, however, only delayed the deluge of derision, and the buckets of whitewash will be teetering for some time yet on every doorframe lintel of the Football Association’s swish Soho offices. England are doomed unless Russia lose their last two group matches against a weak Israel and even weaker Andorra next month.

By nice fluke, there has been a heady clash of cultures over the past few days, with comparisons anything but invidious. The intriguing bundle of important international football matches has converged precisely with both rugby league’s grand final and the closing stages of rugby union’s World Cup in France. The ubiquitous radio phone-ins and the letters pages of the public prints have been enthused with discussion on each code’s relative merits, particularly on the simplicity or otherwise of the respective rules and the discipline, chivalry and civility of the players. The pros and cons, the cut and thrust of the polemic in many cases has led to penitent crossover and even total conversion.

Rugby’s World Cup has been surprisingly engaging — hooray for the gallant grandeur of England, France and the other small-fry nations! It has been salutary for the Celts, however, with Wales and Ireland given such a contemptuous bums’ rush that each had to watch last weekend’s quarter-finals on television back in their own homes and behind closed curtains. If their self-esteem is in shock, it’s nothing to the severe clattering their bodies had to endure. Mind you, that goes, with knobs on, for the surviving teams still scrapping to contest next week’s final, for any rugby pitch is now a major crash site — bell-clanging ambulances, paramedics and all. The skilful, expertly timed low tackle is a thrill of the past.

This corner has already broken its fundamental annual rule not to get worked up about football till the clocks are altered at the end of this month — there is ample time ahead to concentrate on soccer’s unending imbroglio of speculation, satisfaction and scandal — and any number of faraway correspondents write to say they relish the seasons being topped and tailed with some shafts of basic information.

Even before the last splurge of qualifying group games are played in rugby union’s World Cup, consensus agrees the tournament has already turned into a calamity for the four from the British Isles. Even before the last splurge of qualifying group games are played in rugby union’s World Cup, consensus agrees the tournament has already turned into a calamity for the four from the British Isles. Even a quarter-final place will mean a grievous sudden-death public execution next weekend. We shall see.

Spectator readers Alan Magid and Timothy Straker were quick on the draw (Letters, 25 August, 8 September) to champion Mike by P.G. Wodehouse in a matey reproach to Robert Stewart’s assertion in his review of Baseball Haiku (Books, 18 August) that there had never been a significant cricket novel. Spectator readers Alan Magid and Timothy Straker were quick on the draw (Letters, 25 August, 8 September) to champion Mike by P.G. Wodehouse in a matey reproach to Robert Stewart’s assertion in his review of Baseball Haiku (Books, 18 August) that there had never been a significant cricket novel. Their testimony would have cheered not only Wodehouse himself but another notable scribbler.

At any sporting junket involving pretentious national prestige, you can guarantee that the ritzy no-expense-spared ‘resplendence’ of a dire and irksome opening ceremony matters far more than any of the actual sport which follows it. Rugby union’s World Cup curtain-up promises the full phonily festive fanfaronade next Friday (7 September) in the Stade de France in Paris. As the cast of thousands strut their swank and fly their flags in front of presidents, prime ministers and princes — all hands to the pomp — I’ll hope to catch the rheumy eye of a few old hands and we’ll sigh in sweet remembrance of the first innocent village-green fête which launched rugby’s inaugural World Cup only 20 years ago in Auckland.

Just about the most warming, sun-beaming day of this monsoon summer was spent in a cuddly western nook of the Malvern Hills at blissful Colwall, watching a languid few hours’ play of a Minor Counties match between Herefordshire and Devon. President of the Devon club is venerable dumpling David Shepherd, not long retired as all cricket’s finest umpire. Roly-poly Shep still terribly misses life in the middle. No wonder — up to last year when, at 65, he had to hand in his white coat, he’d been up early and expectant and ‘gone to the cricket’ for almost half a century, first as a stalwart county pro, then as everybody’s favourite fair and fearless international adjudicator.

Spend half an hour or so in front of a television on Saturday when Hampshire are in the field at Lord’s in the one-day county cup final. I guarantee some vivid and telling olde-tyme captaincy from the Australian Shane Warne. Spend half an hour or so in front of a television on Saturday when Hampshire are in the field at Lord’s in the one-day county cup final. I guarantee some vivid and telling olde-tyme captaincy from the Australian Shane Warne. No matter the tubby blond chevalier is probably the finest spin bowler the game has ever seen — now out to grass in England, it is his combative, cajoling and belligerently inspiring leadership of the hitherto fondly dozy southern county that has become one of the sights (and sounds) of our summers.

London on Saturday stages a precise convergence of the sporting seasons. At the Oval England’s cricketers play the decider of their compelling and all too short Test series against India, and upriver at Twickenham England’s rugby men have a penultimate dress-rehearsal for their imminent World Cup defence in just a month. But it is the restart of Premiership football and its overflowing baggage of baloney, avarice and artful dodging which will be given pole position by its enamoured obsessives in broadcasting and the public prints. Take a deep breath, it’s a long, long way from August till May.

Always keen to buff up its romantic aura, Lord’s this summer inaugurated a ‘tradition’ by nominating a different cricketing notable to toll the umpires’ bell before each day’s play. Always keen to buff up its romantic aura, Lord’s this summer inaugurated a ‘tradition’ by nominating a different cricketing notable to toll the umpires’ bell before each day’s play.

A column’s seasonal staple: what to read on the beach this summer? A column’s seasonal staple: what to read on the beach this summer? Usual form is a rave notice, in matey holiday spirit, for any new book by an old friend. I plead guilty as charged. But this one’s still a terrific book. Be aware, mind you, as you loll in the sun that the Premiership football season will be in full spate by the time you’re home. The crazy carnival of kick whirrs into life again just two Saturdays hence. Not that it’s really been away, what with the transfer market’s monstrous money-changing all summer as well as the latest Beckham saga in California overwhelming the public prints with more contrived hot air than even that engendered by Master Potter’s lit launch.